Police searching for person behind swatting incident that caused massive police, bomb squad response
Police left the scene just before 5 p.m. after dozens of officers responded to what was considered an urgent incident, but ended up not being legitimate.
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A massive police presence outside of a Suffern home that lasted for nearly three hours Thursday was due to a swatting incident, the village's mayor says.
Police left the scene just before 5 p.m. after dozens of officers responded to what was considered an urgent incident, but ended up not being legitimate.
News 12 is told police received a call around 2 p.m. claiming a person fatally shot his brother and that they would shoot any police officer who responded.
"You saw a whole bunch of armed men in green coming across the road altogether, maybe 10 or more, with guns out,” says resident Katrina Morrison.
Police, bomb squad and SWAT teams responded to the home on Lexington Avenue and located two people who had no idea about the situation.
"They were just victims of someone else's bad joke, which is a serious bad joke,” says Suffern Mayor Michael Curley.
SWAT teams searched the home and determined there was no threat. Police determined it was a hoax known as swatting, which is when someone makes a prank call to draw a large police presence to a particular address.
"It's a dangerous situation. You scared this whole neighborhood,” says Curley.
The person who made the call is still at large, but officials say they will find and charge them. They could face both state and federal charges.
A similar situation played out in Dobbs Ferry on Wednesday, where police got a call from someone who claimed he shot two people and threatened to hurt himself. First responders eventually got into the home on Beacon Hill Drive to discover it was also a swatting. The person who allegedly made that call has been arrested.
